A
couple of years ago, a student in a Peace Studies course at Ball State, taught
by jazz saxophonist George Wolfe, claimed that Professor Wolfe used his class
to promote a political agenda, using the classroom to argue against all forms
of violence except revolutionary violence, assigning a one-sided text which
argued among other things that the word “terrorist” was another term for
“guerrilla” and could be applied to the American founders, and offering extra
credits and better grades to students who supported his viewpoints. The facts
are reviewed here.

At
the time, I did not take a position on the student’s claims about Wolfe’s
classroom behavior but instead posted an article by him in FrontPage Magazine
describing his complaints. I did write a critical review of the 500-page class
text Wolfe had assigned, which purported to review hundreds of years of
historical events and analyze the causes of war and peace, and which was
written by an animal psychologist and a philosopher who boasted in the
introduction to their text that was a partisan argument by progressive
activists, and that Peace Studies itself was field devoted to instilling the
tenets of progressive activism in its students. “The field [of Peace Studies]
differs from most other human sciences in that it is value-oriented, and
unabashedly so. Accordingly we wish to be up front about our own values, which
are frankly anti-war, anti-violence, anti-nuclear, anti-authoritarian,
anti-establishment, pro-environment, pro-human rights, pro-social justice, pro-peace and politically
progressive.”

When
the student’s article appeared in FrontPage, the Ball State administration and
faculty instantly came down on his head like a ton of bricks. He was warned by
the chairman of the Political Science Department not to write any more articles
for FrontPage or to talk to the press. He was ridiculed by his professors in
class. When I wrote an editorial questioning the credentials of a jazz
saxophonist to teach issues of war and peace, the Vice Provost at Ball State,
Beverley Pitts defended him saying he was a member of the board of the Toda
Institute for Peace Research. The Toda Institute turned out to be an
organization created by Soka Gakkai, an international Buddhist cult. Backed by his
university, and with the support of the local press, Wolfe went on a campaign
to smear me as a “political extremist” and “McCarthyite.”

Now
Wolfe has written an article for a Ball State University publication called, “Arguments
Against the Horowitz Agenda.” (Unlike Wolfe, I will actually cite
his text so that readers can judge it for themselves. His article contains
no citations of anything I have actually said, nor does it addresses anything
remotely resembling any agenda I have ever advanced or been associated with.
Consequently it is not really an argument against anything except Professor
Wolfe’s fantasies.)

The article begins in a vein that is
sustained throughout: “Of all the universities across the United States who
were subject to attack for liberal bias by political extremist David Horowitz,
in only one did senior administrators publicly come to the defense of their
faculty and their academic programs.Vice President for Academic Affairs
Beverly Pitts, President Jo Ann Gora, Interim Vice President for Student
Affairs and Enrollment Management Randy Hyman, and Joseph Losco, Chair of the
Department of Political Science, are to be commended for their public stance
against political extremism and their efforts to refute the false accusations
directed towards Peace Studies at Ball State University.”

You would never guess from this
statement, that their stance was against an undergraduate student whose crime
was questioning what he felt was an unfair classroom situation and whose views
they tried to suppress. My role in this was merely to give this student a
platform to air his complaints, and to support them by an analysis of the
textbook he was required to read.

As it happens, however, I have never
attacked any university – in the United
States or anywhere else – for “liberal bias.” Or left-wing bias. Ever. In my widely-read
book on the university, The Professors,
which was made notorious by unscrupulous academics like Wolfe, I state quite
clearly: “This book is not intended as a text about left-wing bias in the
university and does not propose that a left-wing perspective on academic
faculties is a problem in itself. Every individual, whether conservative or
liberal, has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to
interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view.
That is the essence of academic freedom.” (See below.)

Not one left-wing academic who has
attacked my academic freedom campaign, and there have been many, have ever
acknowledged that I ever made such a statement, let alone that my public record
shows that these are, in fact, my views and what I am prepared to defend.

Because
of the views expressed above, I make it a practice of never using the term
“bias,” nor have I ever called for the firing or punishment of any professor
for their political views. On the contrary, I publicly defended the First
Amendment rights of Ward Churchill when the Republican governor of Colorado
called on his university to fire him for his political views. I defended
Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, when he was removed as the dean of the new law
school at UC-Irvine after conservatives complained about his left-wing opinions.
(He was subsequently re-instated.) Moreover, my Academic Bill of Rights – the
same that Professor Wolfe regards as an agenda of McCarthyite extremism – states
in no uncertain terms: “No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion
or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.”

The
two books I have written on academic freedom, along with the scores of articles
amounting to tens of thousands of additional words, are entirely and without
exception based on the classic 1915 “Declaration on the Principles of Academic
Freedom and Academic Tenure” of the American Association of University
Professors.” In short, my academic agenda – the “Horowitz agenda” that
professor Wolfe describes throughout his article as “McCarthyite” – is entirely liberal in the sense of the
word used by John Dewey, A.O. Lovejoy, and the other academics associated with the
1915 statement and with subsequent academic freedom statements it inspired.

Professor Wolfe’s article is itself an
example of exactly what he decries: a political smear by an unprincipled
demagogue. Wolfe’s article consists of a series of ad hominem attacks on a straw man – a “political extremist” of his
own manufacture, and depends on a version of events that studiously avoids any
examination of the facts involved. This is the way he argues, “According to my
colleague, Political Science professor Joseph Losco [the same professor who
threatened the Ball State undergraduate if he opened his mouth to complain
about his treatment by Professor Wolfe], Horowitz’s tactics are “reminiscent of
something that would take place in the McCarthy era or the period of the John
Birch Society of the 50’s and 60s.” Talk about guilt by association!

Wolfe justifies this McCarthyesque smear
in the following way:“David Horowitz,
in using extremist language that accuses peace studies professors like myself
of supporting terrorism, and falsely accusing the Ball State Muslim Student
Association of having ties to terrorist organizations, is clearly evoking the
Patriot Act in an attempt to intimidate Americans who believe it was a mistake
to invade Iraq or who identify themselves with the religion of Islam.” In other
words, because I cited a textbook that equated contemporary terrorists with
America’s founding fathers, and pointed out what is an indisputable fact – that
the Muslim Students’ Association is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood and
part of its network – I must be a member of some “Patriot Act” conspiracy to
intimidate Americans from dissenting on the war in Iraq.

This is a classic McCarthyism. The fact
is that I have written many articles – and a recent book – which affirm the
legitimacy of dissent over the war policy in Iraq. If reading is too onerous a
task for Professor Wolfe he could have viewed my hour-long speech on C-SPAN or a
similar speech I gave in Santa Barbara which is currently posted at www.FrontPageMag.com. In both these speeches,
which are about my book Party
of Defeat and the war in Iraq, I say, “Criticism of government
policy is essential to a democracy, and criticism of war policy is
[particularly] important because the stakes are so high.” But Professor Wolfe
isn’t interested in facts because he is an ideologue and for him people like me
who disagree with his progressive views are enemies to whom no decencies are
owed.

Does the professor behave differently in
his classroom? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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